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The Fairwork Project expands to Germany and UK

Posted on 19.11.2019

We’re excited to announce the start of a new phase of the Fairwork Project, where we’ll apply our rating system to assess digital labour platforms in Germany and the UK.

With the generous support of the European Research Council (ERC), the Fairwork Project is expanding its focus to Germany and the UK.

In March 2019, we released our first round of platform ratings, where we applied our five principles of fair work in the platform economy – fair work, fair conditions, fair contracts, fair management, and fair representation – to assess working conditions at major digital platforms in India and South Africa. In 2020, we will now build on our past work by applying these principles to platforms like Uber and Deliveroo in Germany and the UK.

Our aim is to shine a light on the best and worst labour practices in the platform economy. Platform workers (or ‘gig workers’) often lack the legal protections enjoyed by other kinds of workers, and their ability to collectively bargain for better pay and conditions is limited. Our hope is that our ratings will provide a basis for worker organisation and consumer action, and act as a pressure point for platforms to improve wages and working conditions.

We hope that our platform ratings in Germany and the UK, which we will release in 2020, will help improve wages and conditions for platform workers in these two countries.

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